Delivery services (also known as courier services, mail services, and shipping services), such as those offered by the U.S. Postal Service and commercial carriers provide delivery of letters, packages, and parcels (hereinafter referred to as “packages”) to and from residences and businesses across the country. Other delivery services may be provided by merchants, retailers, manufacturers, or other organizations that desire to ship products to users. Typically, such services operate in hub and spoke architecture.
A typical nationwide or international delivery service maintains a large fleet of vehicles. Such vehicles include airplanes and semi-trailer trucks to move packages between hubs and spokes, and smaller vehicles for the “last mile” from spoke endpoints to delivery destinations (for example a home or business). The two largest commercial delivery services in the U.S. together operate over 100,000 last mile vehicles—each of which requires a human operator. In some situations, interaction with a person at pickup or delivery is desired, for example, for proof of delivery, payment on delivery (also known as “cash on delivery” or “COD”), or payment of delivery costs on pickup. The growth of commercial areas, such as business-to-consumer e-commerce and online shopping, is expected to continue to increase the demand for delivery services, and hence the need for capacity and efficiency in the last mile.
Recently, package delivery systems have employed kiosks for receiving packages. The package delivery systems deliver packages to the kiosk, and a user retrieves the package directly from the kiosk. The kiosk delivery provides a safer delivery method when the user may be unavailable to receive a valuable package at the residence of the user. Additionally, unmanned aerial delivery devices are being developed for delivery of packages to users.
Conventional delivery systems do not allow packages to be relocated by unmanned aerial delivery devices from an unmanned kiosk to an alternate kiosk. Conventional delivery systems do not allow packages to be returned by unmanned aerial delivery devices from an unmanned kiosk back to the package delivery service.